Trump: 'Time for Republicans & Democrats to Get Together' on Health Care Plan

I think what should be done is to smash the monopolies that certain insurance companies have between states. Force them to compete.

Initiate a general pool for "catastrophic health insurance" with very particular guidelines as to what is and isn't catastrophic (should include child birth). That would be a new tax, I am normally against that but it seems that these days it almost has to happen. Doctors won't like the payment schedule for something like that, but its better than nothing.

Allow emergency rooms to turn away patients with non life threatening problems - maybe bring up a consultation service along side that. Keep the enforcement of previous conditions within private health care, and keep the 26 year coverage for children.

Possibly also make it less attractive for current medical corporations to be publicly traded. That way the board of directors human desire to be wealthy can be sidelined a bit. I am unsure about that one because the lust for wealth does help with creating new solutions for medicine.

I can't wait to read the new proposals. In 2016, healthcare issues nearly busted me. And none of the problems my family had were serious - just normal human issues. I had to spend about 2000 bucks plus before the insurance really paid anything at all.

a reply to: Fools

I can kind of see this model as a start. I don't think it would work over the long term. But at least it would provide a framework for something more long term to be built on. Unfortunately there's two huge problems. 1.) Especially after this last election the GOP aren't going to want to pass wide sweeping regulations. 2.) It seems like the ones that will take the biggest hit from these proposals are the big three health insurance companies. They also provide the most money to one of the biggest lobby groups in DC. They're going to make sure any bill that threatens their profits will get crushed.

originally posted by: roaland
Both parties agree that if you take away the individual mandate, the one that gives you a great big fine at the end of the year enforced by the IRS which is 2.5% of your income (i know because i just took a class on taxes), that Obamacare can not survive. So give the people a choice instead of forcing people to spend hard earned money on an overly inflated price for a policy they can't afford to use. And allow the people who still wish to keep enrolled in the marketplace stay enrolled. Until at least something else that actually works can be put in place but for # sake quit taking my federal return just because i can't afford an actual plan....let me keep my money, i work hard enough for it....

But without the mandate, you cannot force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions or any of the other purported benefits of an optimized ACA.

The mandate is a key part of the plan.

And it will be a key part of any Republican plan that seeks to cover pre-existing conditions.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Correct about what, depriving human beings of a life saving basic right.


So the plan wasn't perfect .

How's it going to be perfect if a whole party( republicans) don't even want to provide something that all modern civilized countries give to their citizens then how do you expect that plan to NOT have flaws


Your logic is all screwed up.

The GOP didn't want a plan, at least the Democrats tried to provide something for the people, the GOP wanted to do nothing as they always take the side of the elite and wealthy

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: AboveBoard

originally posted by: Martin75
a reply to: Profusion

Can we stop the tit for tat and acting like 3 year olds? Why can't they work together on what is best for the American people? Is that really too much to ask?

I do hear you, but from my perspective things have been bad for so long there is simply no common ground left. It has become a war of finger pointing, obstruction, sabotage and shaming.

The Reps did everything they could to make the ACA fail despite what it could do to help people and ignored the fixes that would make it better and more fair for everyone. They did this the past eight years and is too much to ask the Dems now to instantly forgive them.

The ACA has a couple of parts that if fixed by Congress would solve the high premium raises, for example.

Did you know that Congress shorted insurance companies and only gave them 12% of an agreed amount for their risk management funds and so That is why the premiums are going up, not greedy insurance companies? Reps in Congress did not fund this provision in the ACA as they said they would in order to give folks a bad impression of the law.

CONGRESS failed the ACA and the American people, the law itself is not to blame.

So the Reps are at fault for the huge increases which they conveniently blame on everybody but themselves.

Given this, given their lack of care over what pain they cause the people when they can blame Democrats for it, and given they have doe just that, why on earth would the Dems help them out and put themselves in a position to be blamed for whatever goes wrong down the line? Given the treachery they've already experienced, it would not be smart to stick their necks out now.

It is a sad situation and people will get hurt more than they already have been. It will be solely on the Reps when this happens. They can try to blame the Dems for not helping, but really, they can't even decide what to do next.

I'm with you though : I wish they all could grow up.

How are Repubs responsible for a bill that not a single Republican voted for? Democrats own this fustercluck. You guys had control of both houses and passed this bill in the dead of night on Christmas eve using legislative tricks. You could have passed ANYTHING YOU WANTED. Single Payer. Double Payer. Unicorns and Leprechaun healthcare. It didn't matter. The main architect of the bill, Jonathan Gruber called Democrat voters a bunch of rubes and that they purposely "used tortured language" to get you guys to support it.

Sorry, Obamacare is solely on the Democrats.

It needs to be fixed. The entire healthcare market needs to be addressed. Government created this mess with 60 years of intervention. More government is not going to fix it.

They are responsible for defunding a part of the bill that would have kept everyone's premiums lower out of a false sense of outrage over "bailing out the insurance industry" with subsidies to help them with their risk management.

It is not something people realize, but the reason the bill is so complicated is that an attempt to make it bi-partisan turned it into the patch-work bill it became - and then the Reps pretended they didn't have anything to do with it, including parts that THEY insisted be implemented in the bill.

They created it as much as the Dems did. Then they punished the Dems with what they themselves added into the bill. Fun times, politics! Great deviousness on the part of the Reps!!

Dems should have seen it coming and passed a single payer, but Congress still has to fund legislation, so there's that...

AB

Here’s a political party, the GOP, that has no soul. Has no heart and is basically evil.

And they call themselves Christians.

HUMAN BEINGS, PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE BECAUSE OF THEM!

They want to deprive human beings of something they need and might save lives.

So the plan isn’t perfect, well what do you expect when Lobbyists for the insurers and health industry practically owns the congress and senate.

It’s a miracle it even got through.

Just try to improve the plan, but no, the GOP wants to just wreck it, throw it out even though many HUMAN BEINGS will die from what they do.

For example, think about people with HepC who don’t have health insurance. The medicine that heals this disease cost 1000 a pill.

Believe me many will be unable to get insurance after the GOP hacks it up and you can believe many people will die because of this.

People have to understand that the narrative about health costs being lower if insurance is allowed to be sold across state lines is all part of a larger far right Koch narrative that there should be no regulation and that govt should be made small enough to "drown in a bath tub.

Basically, because ins co's price their products by the cost of health care in each state, you cannot live in a high cost state and buy the same insurance coverage from a low cost state and expect the ins co to charge you the same. And if you already can't afford the premiums in a low cost state, you are not going to be able to afford the same insurance from another state. And, you could very well end up not being able to keep your doctor (where have we heard that before), if your doctor is not in the out-of-state ins network but you want that policy.

Many health care policy experts, however, are rolling their eyes in response.

For starters, many states have already passed laws to allow out-of-state insurers to enter their market. But few insurers opt to do so because of the hard work it will take to build up a network of providers in the new state.
.....
A study that Corlette conducted in 2012 found that states that had passed laws aimed at welcoming out-of-state insurers had produced zero interest from the insurance industry. Not one insurer responded to such laws by selling plans in a new state.
....
With a national market in mind, it might not be worth it for a Texas-based insurer to try to provide plans to customers in Wyoming.

benefitspro


Republican health care plans are all about deregulation, their lala land, cultish "free market" ideology, and "drowning govt in a bath tub". It is NOT about your health or your money. It IS about the wealth of the right wing elite who have the money to buy any healthcare they want and who are only concerned about the health of their Wall Street portfolios. And those right wing elite now have power and influence over our govt in Washington as well as many of the states. Bottom line, the bottom line is their bottom line.

Oh come on you silly sausages, get yourself an NHS like we have in blighty.

a reply to: desert

And if you already can't afford the premiums in a low cost state, you are not going to be able to afford the same insurance from another state. And, you could very well end up not being able to keep your doctor (where have we heard that before), if your doctor is not in the out-of-state ins network but you want that policy.

This needs to be repeated by everyone.


Also, a lot of providers & their subsidiaries have different plans in different States. What will stop them from replacing their current plan in a State with more profitable/expensive plans from a different State? There's a lot of "the grass is greener on the other side" going on in this debate.

8 years of the GOP denouncing Obamacare. 8 years of GOP exposing the evils of Obamacare. What does the GOP have to present to Trump? NOTHING. This should of been a slam dunk. 8 years of incompetent GOP leadership. Trump should *itch slap them for their outstanding performance.

My guess is that there will be language in the replacement that states that Doctors must accept any insurance that a patient carries. I remember reading that somewhere the other day.

Can't remember where I heard it, but the reasoning was that it would simplify the claims process for Providers by setting standards in the Insurance industry for the claims process.

What they need are price caps as well. I don't mean on the Providers, but on the Insurers payouts. For instance, Lets say that an office visit is $130 at one Dr, but it's $105 at another. The insurance has a maximum payout they must pay of $105. The lower cost Dr will get more business, and the other Dr could either compete, or run his practice differently and offer extra services that his patients like, to justify the extra cost that they must pay out of pocket. It's a market driven approach. Let the Insurance companies offer a higher cost plan to customers that offers a higher payout as well. Again, insurance companies would have to compete with each other.

The key is to get costs down, and the only way that will happen is through competition. IMO.

Drug costs need to be regulated in some way. I hate regulation, but this is needed because it's gotten out of hand. One of the medicines I take is $400 a month out of pocket without insurance, but the insurance got it for their cost of $239 and my copay of $40. That's just wrong that non insurance customers get charged more than the insurance company's "negotiated price"